


Not so Far Away After All

by redleader102



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24330844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redleader102/pseuds/redleader102
Summary: The New Order is solidifying it's grasp on the galaxy. In the aftermath of the Clone Wars some years ago, the Galactic Empire has swelled it's ranks and bolstered it's fleets, in preparation for the inevitable challenge to it's rule. That challenge, however, may come from a decidedly unexpected source. Even for those who cannot feel it's presence, the Force has a way of pulling strings. And it has a plan...
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Not so Far Away After All

**Author's Note:**

> So, quick disclaimer: Star Wars and Mass Effect, and their respective characters, plots, etc, are not owned by me, etc, etc. 
> 
> Before you read, please note that this is my first work in a very long time, which was when I was about fourteen. I like to think that my writing ability has somewhat grown since then, but I'm under no illusions that I'm a master story teller. Updates may be sporadic, as life has a way of throwing curveballs at you, and dumping sawdust into the gearbox (Yes, that IS a Matilda reference). Constructive criticism is welcome, as I aim to improve where I can. This is an initial draft more than anything, as I don't know if this will generate any interest, or if my writing is equal to the challenge.
> 
> That being said, I did enjoy drafting this, and I hope someone enjoys reading it at least half as much.

* * *

It had been four months since Kyn Toth upstaged Commander J’ntova in an engagement against an insurgent raid on an Imperial supply convoy. Four months since his ship crippled the Interceptor frigate that had nearly destroyed J’ntova’s Victory-class Star Destroyer, the _Crucible_. Four months since he’d been demoted from Lieutenant Commander to Captain and relegated to a backwater posting in the Outer Rim. In hindsight, he should’ve let that frigate empty its torpedo magazine into J’ntova’s ship, the ungrateful shavit.

It had been a seemingly simple assignment, escorting a trio of Gozanti-class transports and a pair of Sorosuub light freighters, which were ostensibly carrying equipment for the local Imperial garrison on Onderon, from Commenor. The _Crucible_ and two of the newer Vigil-class corvettes, the _Starhawk_ and his own _Fury_ had been tasked with shepherding the convoy to their destination. From there, they were expected to be allowed a short period of shore leave before being rotated out to the Outer Rim to crack down on an outbreak of piracy on the Perlemian Trade Route, near Saleucami.

******* _Four months prior…_ *******

Stars streaked past faster than the eye could truly comprehend, appearing as stretched smears of blue and elongated lines of white. As _Fury_ tunneled her way through the void, in hyperspace, Kyn gratefully accepted a small cup of navy-brew caf from his Executive Officer with a rueful grin. “Sorry, I promise not to make this a recurring theme,” he said, taking a sip with relish.

His XO, Stet Arnem, quirked an eyebrow. “Such is the plight of the unsung heroes of the Imperial Navy, we humble couriers of caf.” His lips curled slightly upwards as he turned his eyes to regard the steaming flimsiplast cup. “Though I pity you more than myself when I consider what you’re drinking. That swill will be the death of you long before any pirate scum gets the chance.”

Kyn narrowed his eyes at his XO as he once more sipped from the elixir of life. “I resent every word that just came out of your mouth.” He pulled out his datapad with his free hand and began browsing through the list of readouts and reports, highlighting three with his thumb for further examination. “Besides, not all of us can bring ourselves to swallow leaf juice.”

This time, it was Arnem who frowned, his cultured eyebrows pinching together. “Sapir tea is an exquisite blend of-".

“Of what is, essentially, boiled leaf juice,” Kyn cut in, with a smirk. “I’ll never understand how you can actually drink it.”

Arnhem rolled his eyes upwards in resignation, conceding before the conversation truly deteriorated into a useless argument over taste. “I wouldn’t expect a classless boor, such as yourself, to understand the time-honored tradition of tea,” he said with a sigh. There was a seemingly tense pause, and then both chuckled, easily dismissing the harmless quibbling.

They’d met at the Prefsbelt Academy, Toth fleeing a depressing life on Ord Mantell, and Arnem romantically inclined towards becoming an officer. To the surprise of many of his peers, including himself, Toth showed aptitude for leadership and was fast-tracked for a command. Arnem saw a rising star and, despite himself, became curious about the awkwardly honest, but capable cadet. He’d approached Toth in a manner somewhere between haughty and cautious, unsure of how to question him. Before he could do more than introduce himself, Toth had promptly grabbed him by the hand, pulled him in for a back-slapping hug, and proclaimed him his new best friend in front of a bewildered audience. It was a jarring, galling experience, but also oddly disarming; no one had ever dared to be so casual with him on account of his family’s influence. It was only later, that Toth explained that Arnem was the first person who hadn’t pretended that he either didn’t exist or acted like he was a threat. He insisted Arnem call him Kyn, who in turn asked Toth to call him Stet. Their initial acquaintance was a minefield of cultural and socio-economic ignorance that led to many embarrassing moments on both sides. There was an attempt at an abbreviated dalliance, but both decided it safer to simply retreat from the whole affair, rather than risk their budding friendship. In its place, they eventually forged a deep bond of mutual respect.

They both graduated among the upper echelons of their class, and Kyn was appointed to command of a CR-90, the _Swift Wind_. He requested Stet as his second in command, and the rest, as they say, was history. They advanced swiftly from there and over the course of a year, were given command of an EF-76 Escort Frigate, the _Aleph_ , after which, Kyn was allowed to command a ship of his choice. It was hardly a choice at all, really. Compared to an aging Dreadnaught-class cruiser, or an antiquated Carrack-class, the Vigil was a _goddess_. Emulating the shape of the Star Destroyer line, she was equipped with state-of-the-art sensors, and three sets of dual heavy turbolaser cannons, able to punch well above her weight. And, thanks to her sensor package, her light turbolaser and laser cannons could track fast-moving targets such as fighters, or even incoming missiles and torpedoes, with a certain degree of reliability. Her modular design even allowed the addition of a concussion missile launcher mounted in the bow, rounding out an already respectable weapons package. With a perfect combination of speed, durability, and firepower, she was a potent opponent in a relatively compact frame, measuring only two-hundred and fifty-five meters in length.

Christened as the _Fury_ , she and her captain established a reputation in a pair of pitched battles against Separatist holdouts in the Tion Cluster, personally accounting for three Diamond-class Cruisers, and a Recusant-class Destroyer. Imperial Command was impressed enough to promote Captain Toth and assign the newly christened Lieutenant Commander to serve under one Commander J’ntova, as part of an anti-piracy and peacekeeping force in the Inner and Outer Rim. J’ntova was a relatively competent officer, though possessed of an obsequious nature and a sense of innate superiority. Quick to anger, J’ntova preferred the use of overwhelming firepower; though this, at least, was done with some skill, for the man had an aptitude for training his gunnery crews. Over the last two months of service, he never made any real attempt at getting to know the other officers under his command, something Kyn was thankful for. Doubtless he considered himself above those he did not seek to ingratiate himself with.

Snapping back to the present, Kyn finished his caf with a few more swallows, and deposited the empty cup into a trash receptacle. At some point, a service droid would empty its contents into the trash compacter, whereupon the debris would be ejected into space. A well-oiled, ordered process, much like the Imperial Navy. With that in mind, he turned back to his friend and XO, and was about to ask him about the status of their voyage, when the bridge lights abruptly turned red and warning klaxons began to blare. He grabbed onto the railing in front of the holo-projector as the ship began to vibrate erratically. “Status report!”, he barked.

The sensor officer, Junior Lieutenant Dobbs, gripped the back of the nearest chair and had to shout to make herself heard over the din. “We’re reading a mass shadow in our hyperspace corridor, we’re going to be pulled into realspace, t-minus eight seconds!”

Immediately, Stet slapped the ship-wide intercom and cried, “This is Senior Lieutenant Arnem, all hands, brace for emergency deceleration!” Two and a half seconds later, with a protesting whine from the inertial compensators, the _Fury_ was torn from hyperspace, along with the rest of the convoy. There was no celestial body to explain this, clearly, as they were in transit along a _very_ well-travelled and thoroughly mapped hyperspace lane. Kyn’s voice rang out through the bridge, authoritatively quelling any hints of panic the crew might have had, well-trained and disciplined though they were. “Sensors, I need information. What pulled us out?”

The holoprojector came to life, and instantly displayed the Imperial convoy in friendly, reassuring blue. Dobbs and her crew worked quickly at their stations, cycling the sensors and establishing a clear picture of the battlespace. “Reading several contacts ahead sir, upwards of two dozen, along with a small asteroid. The asteroid appears to be the source of the interdiction field. Classify eighteen contacts as fighter craft; twelve Z-95’s and six Rihkxyrk’s, five light freighters, a carrier analogue, two DP-20’s, and an Action-VI transport.” As she rattled them off, the ships in appeared on the holo-display in red, displaying their positions, distance, energy output, and speed, while the asteroid popped up in yellow. “Enemy formation is moving, distance is one-eighty-seven kilometers, and closing!”

A new voice interjected itself into the exchange. “Sir, Commander J’ntova is ordering us to establish a cordon around the convoy, forty kilometers off his starboard aft.”

Kyn grimly turned to the viewport, and into the void, which would very soon be anything but empty. Such a small force was no match for a mainline Imperial warship and two escorts, and yet they were attacking them head-on. It was madness, and yet this madness dominated his current reality, even as he sought to bring order to it. “Helm, take us to that position. Shields up, angle them for maximum deflection along our central line, as needed. Weapons, check your targets, fire as they bear. Prepare to divert auxiliary power!” The bridge exploded into a flurry of organized activity as he gave orders, the ship humming beneath his feet. Energy surged through the _Fury_ ’s reactor as she came up to full combat readiness in under a minute, a testament to Imperial training. As the raiders steadily ate up the distance between them and the convoy, the _Crucible_ and the _Starhawk_ began to deploy their TIE Fighters, twenty-four from J’ntova’s ship, and another eight from the other Vigil-class. On command, they spread out into a standard defensive screen in front of the convoy, even as the _Crucible_ began to lumber…forward?

The same moment that Kyn understood, his communications officer confirmed his thoughts. “Sir, the _Crucible_ is ordering us and the _Starhawk_ to stay behind and guard the convoy against any stragglers.”

As he said this, the _Starhawk_ launched its remaining eight TIE’s, the twin-engine fighters splitting into pairs to maximize their effectiveness, with one pair coming to orbit the _Fury_. Kyn sneered at the display, as J’ntova’s Star Destroyer began to open up with her batteries, emerald bolts of energy reaching out towards the pirate vessels. “Damned glory hound. He’s thinking with his blaster instead of his brain.” After a moment, he said, “Establish an up-link with the _Starhawk_ and coordinate our fire. Give her TIE’s as much sensor data as we can, and get as many of them home as possible.”

The raid fleet’s fighters suddenly split into elements, two Z-95’s per Rihkxyrk, and accelerated towards the advancing TIE Fighter screen. The sudden swap from rag-tag group to professional fighter squadron caught Kyn flat-footed. Evidently it caught the TIE’s off-guard too, because their reaction was a fatal couple of seconds too slow. In a flash, the thirty-six fighter strong formation lost a quarter of its number, dropping to twenty-four, and the formation disintegrated as both sets of fighters engaged in CQC. Four more were lost in the immediate chaos, bringing the two screens to near numerical parity. At this point, the TIE Fighters were able to use their superior agility to evade their opponents and kill two Z-95’s, but the damage had already been done. The rest of the raid fleet used the brief period of confusion to slip through the screen and began to bear down on the _Crucible_. “Helm, get us to the _Crucible_ , all ahead flank.” J’ntova’s orders be damned, if the _Crucible_ was lost, he doubted that the _Starhawk_ and the _Fury_ would be able to defend the convoy.

To his credit, J’ntova seemed to understand his sudden peril, because the _Crucible_ began to focus its fire. _As they should have done from the beginning_ , he thought to himself. Concentrated turbolaser fire pierced the shields of one of the DP-20’s, and quickly reduced the ship’s prow into a scorched, wretched facsimile of it’s previous form. After being exposed to the fury of the _Crucible_ ’s weapons for a moment longer, the ship sheared in two, the drive section tumbling away as the ship’s melted fore cooled into a congealed, vaguely amorphous blob. It was too little, too late, however. As the _Crucible_ turned its guns on the second DP-20, the carrier analogue, a converted Bulk Freighter, suddenly launched another four vessels. “New contacts just launched from the analogue, Skipray Blastboats!” The Skiprays immediately flooded the space between them and the _Crucible_ with ECM, preventing the ship from using it’s missile batteries. While neither of the Vigils were affected, and either could have given the _Crucible_ the targeting data necessary to launch if they had established an up-link earlier, there was no time.

Now on their final approach, the Blastboats closed in on their target, juking and weaving to throw off the aim of the _Crucible_ ’s gunners, who fired in vain. When they were within two kilometers, each of the Skiprays fired a pairs of torpedoes each and opened up with their ion cannons. The combined stress of eight proton torpedoes and a storm of ion cannon fire severely strained the shields, even as the second DP-20 was forced to break off it’s approach to avoid meeting the same fate as its sister. The Skiprays blew past the command tower of the _Crucible_ and looped back around to hit the ship’s flanks, stitching her shields with more ion cannon fire, and another set of torpedoes, along with a pair of torpedoes from the Action VI/Interceptor Frigate. This time, the shields buckled, and three torpedoes slammed home into the ship’s armor. The warheads blasted through the _Crucible’s_ armor and opened sections of her hull to vacuum, killing dozens of her crew, and sucking several unfortunate souls into space, before the bulkheads could seal off the breaches. The Interceptor Frigate’s own turbolaser batteries raked the Star Destroyer’s bow and superstructure with ruby blasts of plasma, joined by dual and quad laser cannon fire from the lighter armed freighters. The torrent of fire boiled away armor plating, even as the frigate lined up her torpedo battery with the _Crucible_ ’s bridge.

It was at this point that the _Fury_ arrived. She made her presence known with an alpha strike from her six heavy turbolaser cannons slamming into the Frigate’s lower bow. The Interceptor’s shields turned opaque, barely able to ward off a second volley. She was beginning to turn when the third salvo shattered them, blowing through the “chin” of the ship and setting off her torpedo magazine. The resulting secondary explosions ripped open the entire forward section to space, and the ship died almost instantly, the entire crew either spaced or fried. Ribbons of metal allow curled away from the blast site, looking for all the galaxy like a shredded can of fizzy drink. The Skipray Blastboats attempted another run with their ion cannons but their ECM was rendered ineffective, thanks to targeting data supplied by the _Starhawk_ , and one of them was destroyed by the _Fury_ ’s light turbolasers, with another lost to her pair of attending TIE’s. By now, the remaining TIE Fighters had mopped up all but one of the raiding fighters and were returning to attack the raiders from behind as they began to retreat. The asteroid fitted with the gravity well generator suddenly exploded into a bevy of pieces as it self-destructed, opening up the way to hyperspace travel. The remaining DP-20 slowed only to pick up a handful of escape pods, then jumped into hyperspace, followed by the Blastboats. The light freighters were slower off the mark, and were pounced on by the TIE swarm, losing another two ships, with a third claimed by a pair of concussion missiles from the _Fury_. The single surviving Z-95 had managed to dock with the Bulk Freighter, which now turned to flee, but it was for naught. The _Crucible_ at last took its revenge, emptying its entire complement of eighty concussion missiles into the Freighter. When the explosions finally died down, there was not much left besides fragments of metal confetti.

On the bridge of the _Fury_ , there was a brief silence, before the Imperial crew began to come down from the adrenaline-high of combat. “Sir the surviving raiders have made the jump to hyperspace,” Dobbs reported. “There are a few escape pods still in the zone, and two pilots that are extra-vehicular.”

Kyn nodded slowly, his eyes not leaving the display, as he thought yet again to the tactics of the pirate fleet. No, not pirates. Pirates did not coordinate like this. This was an insurgent operation, possibly even a rebel cell from Onderon. Every Imperial knew of Saw Gerrera, the man was legendary for his resourcefulness, his ruthlessness, and his ability to hit where no one expected. He gave himself a mental shake. Ultimately none of that mattered; what happened here, and why, was a job for the Imperial Security Bureau, not a low ranking naval officer. “Contact the _Crucible_ , see if we can retrieve those raiders. I’m sure the ISB would love to get their hands on them-“.

He was interrupted by a flash of green lancing out from one of the _Crucible_ ’s portside turbolaser cannons. It fired again, and again, four more times, before once more falling silent. The escape pods had all vanished from the display. The bridge had gone still; everyone knew what had just happened. The comm officer, Zal Tarrence, went pale as his terminal pinged. “Incoming message from the _Crucible_ , sir,” he said with a swallow. “…No prisoners.” There were two more flashes of green light. 


End file.
